I’ve worn these boots to walk the Pecos path for over ten years. Today I thanked and retired them.

It’s fitting that they fell apart on this trip as I also let go of Trudy’s tree – a tree I deemed and decorated as Trudy’s tree on my first visit to Our Lady of Guadalupe Monastery, All Saints Day, October 2012. Imagine my shock when I discovered that someone had cut it down!

I was devastated.

Alone, I wailed in the woods. How could this have happened? Didn’t they notice the cross made of rocks and sticks surrounding the tree? How could they have missed the collection of rocks carried and added by me and my friends to this ad hoc memorial? And then, I heard my sister say, like a wind in my heart, “I’m not here.”

Even as my heart was breaking, I heard her again say, “I’m not here,” but this time, I knew exactly what she meant.

Trudy was everywhere and everything. Free. And, asking me to let her go.

Broken hearted, still in shock and confused, a kind man came along and asked what was wrong. I blubbered my story and disbelief in someone sawing down my tree. Without missing a beat he offered, “I’ll help you move your rocks over to my favorite tree in the whole woods. The tall pine just down the way.” “There really aren’t that many rocks,” he added. “It won’t take us long.”

I couldn’t think straight. Is that what I wanted?

As I resisted and said that I didn’t understand how this had happened, he said, “Don’t read too much into this. Let’s just move the rocks and make a Valentine heart by that tree down the path. Come on, I’ll help you.”

But I couldn’t.

He left.

As I cried and paced circles in the grass, Trudy’s reassurances settled deeper into my bones and I began moving rocks.

I dug in the dirt. I fit old and new rocks together to shape a heart. I stepped back and admired my work and the dirt beneath my nails, and it was right. This heart marks my deep gratitude for this land and the healing stones of love it brings to all of us that walk this path.

Over the next four days of visiting the Pecos heart, my understand of the events also took shape.

I can allow and touch deep sadness of my loss of the physical tree, but I choose to celebrate and sit by this new heart in the woods. Pecos, and the Spirit that finds me here, knew I was ready to live beyond the graves of my past and move forward into the next chapters of my life.

And this chapter starts with, thank you.

• Visit earlier posts about the gifts of Pecos by using the search box above. With love, Theresa.